An Interview with Yehudi Wyner, a Berkshire Review for the Arts Podcast by Michael Miller

Yehudi Wyner in his Workspace. Photo Michael Miller 2010.


Yehudi Wyner, whose career as a composer and a performing musician goes back some sixty years, finds himself entirely focused on the present at the moment, and very positively so. For one thing, Bridge Records, who have issued the most substantial body of his work on CD, have released his collected sacred music, and Mr. Wyner is very pleased to have it all together in one place. Secondly, he is anticipating the premiere of a new work, a secular cantata called Give Thanks for All Things.

 As he explains in the interview we now offer as our latest podcast, the work didn't come to him easily, and, although he refuses to pass judgment on it until he hears it played before an audience, he is looking forward to hearing it performed by one of his favorite groups and conductors, The Cantata Singers under David Hoose. Beyond that, he is busily at work revising his Fragments from Antiquity (1978) for a performance by his favorite soprano, Dominique Labelle, with the Lexington Symphony in February, 2011.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Semyon Bychkov and Kirill Gerstein with the SF Symphony in Ravel, Rachmaninoff, and Walton, by Steven Kruger

Walton
William Walton


The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Saturday, Oct. 16, 2010
Semyon Bychkov, Conductor
Kirill Gerstein, Piano

Ravel - 

Le Tombeau de Couperin
 (1917)
Rachmaninoff - Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Opus 43 (1934)
Walton - Symphony No.1 in B-flat minor (1935)

This week's concerts at Davies Hall marked a welcome return to the podium of Semyon Bychkov, who has become a favorite with San Francisco audiences in recent seasons. Mr. Bychkov has entered the admirable ranks of unattached guest conductors who travel the world conducting only the music they love, and the happy results are palpable. This year, his passion is the Walton First Symphony, and our audience is all the richer for what his advocacy has found in the music.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




A New Boris Godunov at the Met, with René Pape, Stephen Wadsworth Director, Valery Gergiev, Conductor, by Michael Miller

René Pape in the title role in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. Photo Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera


Modest Mussorgsky (music and libretto), 

Boris Godunov

Metropolitan Opera House: 10/18/2010.

Boris Godunov - René Pape
Prince Shuisky - Oleg Balashov
Pimen - Mikhail Petrenko
Grigory - Aleksandrs Antonenko
Marina - Ekaterina Semenchuk
Rangoni - Evgeny Nikitin
Varlaam - Vladimir Ognovenko
Simpleton* - Andrey Popov
Nikitich - Valerian Ruminski

Conductor - Valery Gergiev
Met Opera Orchestra and Chorus

Production - Stephen Wadsworth
Set Designer - Ferdinand Wögerbauer
Costume Designer - Moidele Bickel
Lighting Designer - Duane Schuler
Choreographer - Apostolia Tsolaki

Today science fiction seems to have replaced history as the field in which the great truths of our inner and social lives are reflected, and historicism, as it evolved in the nineteenth century, is no longer a tangible part of our world. This is not to say that the discipline has died out or even declined, but the historical perspective which for a century or so stood as the foundation of people’s perception of their world, became a branch of philosophy, and permeated fiction, poetry, and theatre is no longer so essential to us. And this, in turn, is not to say that great history is no longer being written, or that people don’t reach for historical books with some urgency, or that historical fiction is no longer popular. Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov

 is a powerful case in point. It even stands apart from the rest of nineteenth century historical opera in the seriousness of the composer-librettist’s faith in history as a potent subject in itself. In other prominent examples of this immensely popular genre — Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux,Wagner’s Rienzi, Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, Verdi’s Don Carlo, and Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa — either political commentary of a revolutionary tinge or a manufactured love interest, both of which might be characterized as Romantic “entertainment values,” mediated between history per se and the operatic stage. Mussorgsky avoided the Romantic conventions set in motion by Schiller, Scott, Bulwer-Lytton, and Hugo, reaching out for a more sober kind of history, which would serve the Russian nation best and raise his opera to the highest intellectual level.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Arthur Miller's The Crucible directed by Julianne Boyd - a Triumph for the Barrington Stage Company, by Michael Miller

Crucible_bsc10kspra_287
Starla Benford, Jessica Griffin and Fletcher McTaggart in the Crucible. Photo Kevin Sprague.


The Crucible

By Arthur Miller
Directed by Julianne Boyd
October 6, 2010 - October 24, 2010

Cast:

Glenn Barrett
Starla Benford
Edward Cating
Rosalind Cramer
Maggie Donnelly
Jessica Griffin
Betsy Hogg
Christopher Innvar
Jeffrey Kent
Caroline Mack
Fletcher McTaggart
Matt Neely
Peter Samuel
Gabrielle Smachetti
Gordon Stanley
Kim Stauffer
Peggy Pharr Wilson
Robert Zukerman

Creative Team:

Julianne Boyd - Director
David M. Barber
Brad Berridge
Kristina Lucka
Renee Lutz
Scott Pinkney
Kristina Sneshkoff

The Barrington Stage Company excels in several different areas — modern classics, musicals, and brainy little contemporary plays — and is plagued only by one persistent flaw, the policy of using excessive amplification even in the diminutive Stage 2 theatre. Fortunately, that was absent in this performance, and all I have to talk about is theatre.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




A Grand Tour, Part 1: The Digital Flâneur by Alan Miller

Je_ramasse

Like cats chasing tails, all that is urgent in contemporary discussions of the city circles around the topic of density. While this makes it easy to define the shape of the boxing ring, it doesn’t set the rules of the fight, and boy oh boy is density ever a fight. Here in Sydney urban planning discourse feels like a nightmare dreamed in a fever, a chase scene in which it is impossible not to run in circles, slowly. As someone who cares deeply about Sydney’s future, it was a sweet relief to leave Smug City for a few weeks to see how they make cities in Europe.

 on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Alan Miller

Omar Sangare: from Dialogue One at Williams to United Solo (usolo) on Forty-Second Street, with an Account of D1 2009 and Jonah Bokaer, by Michael Miller

Omar Sangare in True Theatre Critic. Photo Leland Brewster.


Omar Sangare founded the Dialogue One Festival for solo theatre in 2007 at Williams College, where he had just assumed a position as Assistant Professor of theatre studies. [about Dialogue One 2007 / about Dialogue One 2008: preview/review] Before that, he had built up a stellar reputation as a writer, poet, singer, and actor in his native Poland, receiving a Ph.D. from the theatre Academy in Warsaw, where he studied with the great film director, Andrzej Wajda, among others. His many talents came together in solo theatre, a field in which he is well-known in Central Europe and at international festivals. He was voted Best in Acting by the New York International Fringe Festival in 1997 for his one-man drama, True Theatre Critic.

 The same year Sangare was invited to the Jerzy Grotowski theatre in Wroclaw, Poland, where he won four prizes at the theatre Festival. The monodrama was presented also in Canada, England, Ukraine, Germany, and the United States, where it recently received the Best Performance Award at the San Francisco Fringe Festival.
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Welcome to the Berkshire Artsnet, the Social Network of the Berkshire Review an International Review for the Arts

A Williamstown Farm. Photo © 2007 Michael Miller.

The Berkshire Artsnet

 is the social network of the Berkshire Review for the Arts, an international arts magazine based in western New England and New York with international coverage of art, architecture, photography, classical music, opera, theatre, literature, dance, food & drink, and travel. The Artsnet is intended to serve as a forum for artists, photographers, writers, playwrights, actors, musicians — creators of all kinds — and their audiences. Post your recent work for discussion. Start a forum on some topic of special concern to you. Announce concerts, exhibitions, etc., etc. Have fun. This is your part of the site.
Read the full announcement on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Vincent van Gogh: Campagna Senza Tempo – Città Moderna. Vittoriano (Rome) until February 6th, 2011, by Daniel B. Gallagher

Van_gogh_bevitori

“I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”

So sings Don McLean in the 1970 hit written while he was working for the Berkshire School District. The tune has come to immortalize Van Gogh as a stridently independent artist who struggled with sanity and took his life “as lovers often

 do.”

Cornelia Homburg has put together a show in Rome to demonstrate that, pace McLean, the legendary painter did in fact believe the world was meant for him, and he was not that independent in his approach to painting. He may have suffered extreme uncertainty in his private life, but Vincent had a clear vision of his professional goals and how he was going to achieve them.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




From Indifferent to Engaged: Confessions of a Museum Bench-Sitter, by Nancy Salz

Face

Museum benches aren’t just for the weary. They’re for the bored and unreceptive, for the artistically indifferent and overwhelmed  —  for people like me.  All my life I visited museums, but I rarely saw anything. I never got into fine art, and it never got into me. Never, that is until a few weeks ago when I visited the John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women exhibition at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller





Katharina Wagner's Die Meistersinger, now in its Fourth Year at Bayreuth, by Michael Miller

James Rutherford as Hans Sachs communes with the Authorities in Die Meistersinger, Act II, sc. 1. Photo Bayreuther Festspiele GmbH / Enrico Nawrath.


Richard Wagner, 

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Musical Direction - Sebastian Weigle
Stage Direction - Katharina Wagner
Set Design - Tilo Steffens
Costume Design - Michaela Barth, Tilo Steffens
Lighting - Andreas Grüter
Choirmaster - Eberhard Friedrich

Hans Sachs, Schuster - James Rutherford
Veit Pogner, Goldschmied - Artur Korn
Kunz Vogelgesang, Kürschner - Charles Reid
Konrad Nachtigal, Spengler - Rainer Zaun
Sixtus Beckmesser, Stadtschreiber - Adrian Eröd
Fritz Kothner, Bäcker - Markus Eiche
Balthasar Zorn, Zinngießer - Edward Randall
Ulrich Eisslinger, Würzkrämer - Florian Hoffmann
Augustin Moser, Schneider - Stefan Heibach
Hermann Ortel, Seifensieder - Martin Snell
Hans Schwarz, Strumpfwirker - Mario Klein
Hans Foltz, Kupferschmied - Diógenes Randes
Walther von Stolzing - Klaus Florian Vogt
David, Sachsens Lehrbube - Norbert Ernst
Eva, Pogners Tochter - Michaela Kaune
Magdalene, Evas Amme - Carola Guber
Ein Nachtwächter - Friedemann Röhlig

I won't even say that I wish that, in beginning with Katharina Wagner's production of Die Meistersinger,

 I was starting on a cheerful note. Nothing of the kind. Katharina has studiously avoided her great grandfather's romanticized Nürnberg, where great artistic, literary, and musical achievement lurked around every corner, where the citizens dressed colorfully, where the men engaged in witty exchanges, while the girls joyfully gave themselves over the dancing, if not to their young men, at every opportunity. She has, rather, chosen to focus on the repressive nature of this conservative society, as embodied in the guild system, the obsessive power of routine in daily life, its neuroses, and, yes, its nightmares. Having a certain penchant for black humor and oddity, I entered with pleasure into my five-hour visit to this frightening and pitiable world, and I laughed, quite a bit, which, I should hope, is the desired result of any Meistersinger production. If my laughter was a trifle sour at times, it's not entirely alien from the sarcastic wit of Wagner's libretto. Hence, I am pleased to say that Katharina Wagner won her war, buoyed up by a splendid vocal, orchestral, and comedic performance, which had its own vigorous life, no matter how strange the goings-on on stage. And, if one is open-minded enough not to resist these, one can expect to gain a fair bit of insight into human nature, history, and Richard Wagner's comic masterpiece.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller